Right There on My Forehead
Volume 12, Number 44,
Issue 591
I’ve always been surprised that no one ever asks me about it. It’s right there above my glasses and below my receding hair line. About half an inch long—a perfectly vertical scar on my brow. To me, it is very obvious, but to others—either people don’t care or—more likely—it just isn’t that obvious unless you get really close to me.
I only know of three or four people alive that actually know the story. When I was three or four, I fell off my tricycle a couple of blocks from my house and started gushing blood. While Mom drove us to the hospital, a caring neighbor held his hand on my head while it was in his lap. That scar has been with me thirty-nine years now; it has gone with me everywhere. It became part of me. Just like all the other great and horrible events that have ever happened to me, professionally and personally, that event and the event’s tangible reminder go with me each day to the next day.
Good professionals of today are forged by their historical experiences--good and bad--that they are more than willing to share by bringing them to apply to your need of the moment. Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Physicians, Architects, Lawyers and Certified Public Accountants—for example—all mould their qualifications of the present day based upon the triumphs and tragedies of their pasts.
Being a service professional is far more an art than a science. Every year a national consumer group picks 100 of the best CPAs and gives them a complex hypothetical tax return to prepare. The result is almost 100 different answers as to the “total tax” in the particular situation. Then the CPAs start to professionally banter around the test and usually the judges then revise their answer based upon the professional bantering that ensues. Often there are multiple answers. Yes, multiple answers.
Rarely in life is any service an exact science. There are usually multiple answers to the same problem and that is usually the point of hiring a professional: being able to brainstorm with someone who has been there before about alternatives and hypotheticals and potential solutions. Then, the customer/client needs to pick one course of action based upon the advice and counsel received. The consumer/client who wants it multiple ways rarely gets that. There is always good and bad to every course of action—a mix of risk and potential reward. There is rarely always good and only reward—there is always some element of risk. Therefore, there always needs to be some level of tolerance for not having a perfect bull’s eye.
Hindsight is a difficult emotion for a lot of people to stomach. The benefit of hindsight is always to wish that the course had been slightly different. The best customers have great memories that remind them that getting as close as possible to the target was the original desired goal. The best customers know that the quality of the information that charted the course ultimately decided how close to the target you ultimately came.
When there is poor information and communication when deciding on the course, the potential distance from the desired target becomes greater and greater. Navigating is an art and not a science. When the conditions surrounding the meeting to decide the course of action are interfered with by lack of focus and the presence of distractions, even the professional artists find it difficult to work.
Once or twice a year, clients will forward to me letters that have been received from the Internal Revenue Service calling to their attention that an early IRA distribution wasn’t included in the tax return that I prepared. My first question always is, “Did you receive the distribution?” My next one is, “Did I know about this?”
It’s always difficult to prepare tax returns by mind reading. A premature IRA distribution is a big event. The best clients know to call me in advance and let me know that they are thinking about taking one. The average client simply brings me the form in March of the following year. The client that I wish I didn’t have never even tells me about it and loses the 1099-R form.
The best clients are always ones that know that the best courses of action are always charted through brainstorming with experienced professionals who have battle scars from handling difficult life situations--both related to their profession and not--by brainstorming and focusing-in on a course of action to get as close to the target as possible.
The best parachutists, dart players, archers, and marksmen know that bull’s-eyes are exciting but that the most important things in getting the bull’s-eyes come through experience—training, preparation, concentration, focus and drive and determination. I think that the best CPAs, lawyers, electricians, plumbers and physicians know this, too, and practice it every day.
Sometimes professional experience in the marketplace is obvious and sometimes it isn’t. And the best professionals are ones that have both won a lot and lost a bunch. Constantly losing certainly doesn’t make a good professional, but I don’t think that always winning does, either.
The professional might think that they have the right history to bring to your task, but you have to look for clues and make inquiries. You have to listen to the stories that your potential new professional can tell you about their prior wins, losses, bull’s-eyes, targets and philosophies. Then you have to choose your professional with your heart and trust them completely. You should be happy that they are there for you and let them hold your head in their lap while you go through difficult times.
David B. Robinson, CPA
Index of Previous Issues of Tax Fax
